


Just Friends, No More

by moffwithhishead



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, M/M, brief mentions of underage stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moffwithhishead/pseuds/moffwithhishead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean’s at a party with Jo and Charlie when he looks up and sees Cas across the room making out with his girlfriend Meg. A week ago he got drunk with Cas and might have ended up telling him that he’s still in love with him, has been since they broke up six years ago. They haven’t really talked about it since the next morning when Cas tried to ask Dean about it and he’d told Cas unless the next words out of his mouth were ‘I love you too’, they should just forget that it had ever happened because he didn’t want to lose his best friend. But right now, Dean’s finding it a little hard to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Friends, No More

" _Just friends, lovers no more_  
 _Just friends but not like before_  
 _To think of what we've been_  
 _And not to kiss again..._

_Seems like pretending  
_ _It isn't the ending  
_ _Two friends drifting apart  
_ _Two friends but one broken heart_..."

Dean’s at a party with Jo and Charlie when he looks up and sees Cas across the room making out with his girlfriend Meg. A week ago he got drunk with Cas and might have ended up telling him that he’s still in love with him, has been since they broke up six years ago. They haven’t really talked about it since the next morning when Cas tried to ask Dean about it and he’d told Cas unless the next words out of his mouth were ‘I love you too’, they should just forget that it had ever happened because he didn’t want to lose his best friend. But right now, Dean’s finding it a little hard to breathe.

He sets his beer down on the table next to him and walks himself out of the party on autopilot, his brain unable to think of anything except the image of Cas pushing up the hem of Meg’s shirt and Meg wrapping her legs around his waist. 

The universe is  _ **such**_  a dick.

He waits until he’s a couple blocks away from the house and throws up in some poor person’s bushes. He’s crouching in someone’s lawn with his head between his knees and trying to remember how to breathe because this is wrong, this is so wrong, and everything  _ **hurts**_.

Footsteps interrupt his near-panic attack a couple minutes later and Dean doesn’t even have to look up to know who it is, “Hey Cas.” 

“Hello, Dean.” His best friend’s voice is as calm and collected as it ever was when he sits down next to Dean and rests a hand on his shoulder, “Are you okay?”

“No,” Dean answers without thinking and regrets it immediately. He looks up to see Cas concerned now, that same face Sam gets when he’s found a subject that he’s not going to let go until someone tells him what’s going on. “And no,” Dean continues, “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

Cas keeps rubbing his back and god, Dean really wishes he had a toothbrush or some mints or something right now because he’s never wanted to kiss someone so much in his entire life. But he can’t do that anymore, for so many reasons, and all of them are his fault. He barely crawls over to the bushes in time to throw up again and when he’s done, Cas is still rubbing his back and _ **god**_ , Dean just wishes he’d go away right now. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to  _Meg_?” He says her name with far more venom than he’d intended and winces when he feels Cas’ hand still on his back for a second, “Sorry. I just… she’s probably worried about you.” 

After a couple minutes of silence Cas nods and sits next to Dean again, facing the street instead of the bushes, “So this is about Meg?”

Yes it’s about Meg. It’s about how much it fucking blows that because of one stupid fucking moment when they were thirteen, Dean has to suffer for the rest of his life. It’s about how wrong it is to see anyone but Dean kissing Cas. It’s about that stupid possessive ache in his chest when he sees his best friend with anyone else. It’s about Meg kissing Cas in a way that Dean taught him, showing everyone at that stupid fucking party just how into Cas she is. It’s about how for the life of him, Dean can’t bring himself to hate Meg because she makes Cas happy and how he hates himself for even wanting to hate her. It’s about how unfair and shitty the world is and how he’d give anything to go back to when Cas didn’t know that Dean was still in love with him, has been in love with him this whole time, and regrets breaking up with him more than he’ll ever be able to verbalize. But Dean doesn’t say that.

Instead he sighs and shakes his head, “No. It’s… it’s not about her.” Cas nods like he understands (and the stupid fucking bastard, he probably does - he could always read Dean like a book), “So it was about us kissing at the party?” His voice is abnormally thick when he answers and if anyone asks later, Dean will blame it on the half bottle of tequila he’d chugged before coming to the party, “Yeah.” 

They’re both quiet for a couple minutes and Dean can’t help but lean against Cas (he’s a little drunk, Cas is a lot warm). 

“ _You_  broke up with  _me_ , Dean,” Cas says it almost so quietly that if Dean hadn’t been listening for it, he probably wouldn’t have heard it. “You broke up with me for Lisa, remember?”

He remembers. He’d been thirteen and stupid and fucking terrified because people weren’t supposed to meet the love of their life in fifth grade. They weren’t supposed to fall in love playing hopscotch during recess or be with someone for years before they’d even started high school. He thought being a teenager meant sleeping with lots of people, doing stupid shit and falling in love as many times as you could. He’d thought that they deserved to be normal, him and Cas. As stupid as it sounds, he’d thought that he’d been doing the right thing at the time. It only took him three weeks of being with Lisa to realize that he didn’t want to be with anyone else because anyone else wasn’t Cas. And at that point he was too scared to admit that he’d fucked up because he knew that he hurt Cas. He was no good for him anyways, right? So Dean had shut his mouth, bottled his feelings, and spent the first two years of high school learning how to be Cas’ best friend again because that’s what the two of them had needed. And it had worked surprisingly well - well enough that they’d agreed to be roommates their first year of college. Everything had been fine until Cas decided to have his stupid birthday and Dean had insisted on taking him drinking and they’d gotten drunk and… last week  _sucked_.

“Yeah Cas,” Dean sighs and rubs a hand over his face, “Yeah, I remember.” Cas huffs a humorless laugh beside him and sounds almost angry, “I’m  _ **allowed**_  to be happy, you know. I’m allowed to have this.” Dean’s fists clench unconsciously by his sides and he closes his eyes but doesn’t move away from his best friend even though he knows he probably should.

“You can’t make me feel guilty for being happy and loving someone who isn’t you,” Cas whispers, his tone edging on bitterly. And it hurts.  _ **Jesus**_ , does it hurt to hear him say it out loud.

Dean closes his eyes and has to breathe for a minute so he doesn’t cry (from hearing Cas say that he loves Meg or frustration or just general unfairness in the world, he’s not really sure), “Cas, I… fuck, okay, you’re going to be mad at me for saying it like this but I love you. And at this point I’m probably going to always love you. I’ll probably be 90 and in my nursing home, bitching to my roommate about how I fucked up the love of my life when I was thirteen and stupid,” he chuckles darkly because he’s not exaggerating or joking. “And I want you to be happy more than you’ll ever know…  _even_  if it’s without me.”

He turns and rests his forehead on Cas’ shoulder so he doesn’t have to look at him when he says this, “Meg makes you happy and I am so fucking thrilled that you’re happy, man. She makes you laugh like I used to be able to and you haven’t smiled this much in a really long time, Cas, and for that, I’d give her the fucking Nobel Peace Prize if I could. Because nobody deserves to be happy more than you.” Dean’s voice cracks a little and he squeezes his eyes shut, “But just because I want you to be happy doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.

I was stupid, I was scared and I made the biggest mistake of my life that night when I broke up with you Cas and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t think I ever apologized before but I am, I’m _sorry_. You deserved better than that and god, I just…” Dean wipes his face off with the back of his hand and silently vows to never drink tequila and smirnoff anything ever again, “I just want you to be happy, man. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t fucking blow seeing you guys make out like that but I fucked up and you shouldn’t have to pay for that. You shouldn’t feel bad for being happy and -” He laughs and moves away from Cas so he’s looking at the front door of the house they’re in front of, wiping his face dry and tries to make his voice sound as normal as possible, “You should get back to Meg.”

There’s no sounds coming from where Cas is sitting for a couple of minutes and then Dean hears the telltale sign of Cas’ converses scraping against the grass as he stands up and leaves without saying anything else. He should probably be hurt but honestly, Dean was never expecting him to say anything back to that. 

Charlie finds him half an hour later like that; sitting in some stranger’s front yard, drunk, staring at their front door aimlessly and red rimmed eyes like he’s been crying and just got himself to stop. She sits down next to him and wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulls him closer and kisses the side of his head, “It’ll be okay, Dean.” 

He lets Charlie lead him back to her apartment and doesn’t protest when she gets into her bed with him, she knows he sleeps better when he’s not alone. Doesn’t even protest when she holds his hand and rests her head on his chest, “You’ll be okay.”

Somehow, he doubts that.

" _We loved, we laughed, we cried_  
 _Then suddenly love died_  
 _The story ends and we're just friends_

_We loved, we laughed and we cried_  
 _Then suddenly love died_  
 _The story ends and we're just friends_."

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted from tumblr, [here.](http://castielresidentbamf.tumblr.com/post/47876324697/deans-at-a-party-with-jo-and-charlie-when-he)
> 
> This is based on real events between me and an ex. To put it simply: I know that feel, Dean. I know that feel. (Don't worry, it was a long time ago and we're better off apart - these two however, are not).
> 
> [Lyrics](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/franksinatra/justfriends.html) are from "Just Friends" by Frank Sinatra.


End file.
